Jewish
Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh

Jewish Genealogy
Society Reorganized

After a lapse of many years the Jewish
Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh reorganized in 2017 and began
to schedule semi-annual meetings at the Rauh Jewish Archives in the
Heinz History Center. In 2018 the newsletter restarted. Steve
Jaron is
the new President and he has added a new modern JGSP website
with latest news, photos, posts, and links. JGSP also
has a Facebook
page plus accounts on many social media platforms including Twitter,
LinkedIn, etc. If you are interested in Pittsburgh
area Genealogy you can
join online from the new website.

Pittsburgh Jewish
Newspaper Project

Pittsburgh was the first US city with a large Jewish population to
digitize its Jewish newspapers.
The project began around 2003 with collaboration between Rodef Shalom
Congregation and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). The effort included
six years of scanning and digitizing over 12,000 issues. The
CMU website
offers free flexible search tools, browsing, and downloading
pdf files.

Family information includes: births, engagements, marriages, obituaries
and a wide variety of social and business news along with
photographs. There are special issues on many small
nearby towns with Jewish populations. The Jewish
newspapers also
covered national and world events. Albert
Einstein visited Pittsburgh and was often a topic of interest.

The complete
offering includes 3 weekly Jewish newspapers and one newsletter that
was published in Pittsburgh:

Other Pittsburgh
area Online Resources

The
Rauh
Jewish History Program & Archives at the John Heinz
History Center has many Pittsburgh area
collections in the reading room of the Detre Library
& Archives. The collection of high
school yearbooks includes:

Pennsylvania Vital
Records

New
Pennsylvania legislation (SB-361) opened access to death
certificates over 50 years old and birth certificates over 105 years
old. The actual certificates were sent to the
Pennsylvania State
Archives who contracted Ancestry.com to scan the
records and put them online. They are free to
Pennsylvania residents or anyone with access to Ancestry.com. Click the
following for current availability:

Pittsburgh History

Stefan Lorant, PITTSBURGH The Story of
an
American City [1964, 1975, 1988]

George H. Thurston,
Pittsburgh
and Allegheny in the Centennial Year. [1876]. Click
here to read a short excerpt about
a 21 year old major in the Virginia military who arrived at the forks
of the Ohio River in 1753. 271 pps. Link
to download complete book (PDF).

George Thornton
Fleming History
of Pittsburg and
Environs: From Prehistoric Times to the American Revolution. Vol.I,
1922, (574 pages). Link to
download Vol I (PDF).
Link
to download Vol II (464 pages) (see Chapter 22 The Ecclesiastical
History, pages 436-441 on Jewish History]

Pittsburgh Area Jewish History

Jacob S. Feldman, The Jewish Experience in
Western Pennsylvania A
History 1755-1945, [1986], 331pps.

Barbara S. Burstin, Steel City Jews
1840-1915, [2008], 366 pps.

Robert Perlman, From
Shtetl to Milltown:
Litvaks, Hungarians, and Galizianers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875-1925.
124 pps.

Pittsburgh Historic
Mapping

Tree of Life
Synagogue on Craft Ave near Hamlet St, 1923
(green circle)- On the full page map you can zoom in on nearby Elsinore
Square (blue circle)and
see the owner's surname for each house.

The
Pittsburgh
Mapping and Historical Site Viewer
helps find old neighborhoods, streets, and landmarks via
overlays
of Pittsburgh area maps and aerial photos. Maps with street
names
are available for 1835, 1855, 1872, 1882, 1890, 1900, 1910, and 1923.
Aerial views with tags for key reference objects are
available
for 1939, 1957, 2005, and 2012. For help in locating
streets consult the closest Pittsburgh
City Directory which usually includes an index of
streets.